Riot in Alexandria: Tradition and Group Dynamics in Late Antique Pagan and Christian Communities (review)

In the opening scene of the 2009 film Agora, the philosopher Hypatia lectures to her students on the beauties of the Ptolemaic universe; in the concluding scene, Cyril’s henchmen stone her before a Christian altar. The vignettes bookend a plot cribbed from Socrates, Sozomen, and Rufinus. The film merely inverts the polarity of the ecclesiastical historians’ narrative, as the irenic Hypatia, dressed in white, struggles to preserve classical rationality in the face of the machinations of a swarthy, black-clad Cyril. The film’s marked dichromaticism mirrors that of the ancient literary texts on which it is based. The characters’ lack of subtlety and the monolithic conflict between pagan classicism and Christian asceticism that drives the plot all make for what is, in effect, a rather faithful film adaptation of early Christian accounts of the sacking of the Serapeum. Only the polarity is reversed; we are asked to identify with the tragic Hypatia rather than with the righteous triumph of a demon-fighting Cyril.

I begin this review of Edward Watts’s new monograph with this summary of Agora because it reiterates what remains a durable narrative of “Christianization.” The film also stands as a foil to Watts’s work. Both the film and the book cover much of the same historical territory and draw on many of the same literary sources. Watts’s book, though, adds a new dimension to the story of the late ancient “culture wars.” Rather than offering a grand narrative of cultural and religious conflict in Alexandria, the book is a microhistory: an intense analysis of “a long weekend in the spring of 486” (254). Watts provides the basic narrative in his first, introductory chapter: a student, Paralius, began to frequent the company of monks from Enaton monastery who were critical of his pagan teachers; Paralius was beaten by fellow students after challenging the authority of his (pagan) teacher, Horapollon; a group of Christian students together with monks from the Enaton appealed to the archbishop, Peter Mongus, who then seized upon the “persecution” of Paralius to lead his congregation to sack a shrine of Isis in the suburb of Menouthis. This brief summary belies the density of Watts’s microhistory, which he explores in three discrete, but interconnected, sets of chapters.

The first set of chapters examines the ways in which written and oral traditions helped define collective identity among groups of students and teachers. These histories also served as vehicles for instilling paradigmatic models of behavior—including, Watts stresses, the value of defending the tradition and its masters against critics. The most engaging part of this section explores the ways that invitations to dinner and other private settings beyond the classroom served to establish intimate bonds between teachers and select student favorites. Students like Paralius, who were left outside these close-knit circles, might look elsewhere for a sense of community and belonging. Paralius was not a Christian before coming to Alexandria, and he may have looked to the monks at the Enaton monastery, Watts suggests, in part because he never became fully bonded to Horapollon’s circle.

Finally, the section examines Damascius’ Life of Isidore (written thirty to forty years after the Paralius-incident) to gauge the long-term effects of the Paralius incident on the collective memory of Neoplatonic communities. The unrest surrounding Paralius’ beating and the sacking of the Isis shrine was followed by a formal investigation of Alexandria’s Neoplatonic teachers and a temporary closure of the schools. This marked a time of ethical crisis among Neoplatonists that began with their support of Illus’ revolt in 484. The failed revolt and the Paralius riot bookended a period in which Neoplatonists wrestled between cultural accommodation and resistance. The Life of Isidore, Watts contends, presents Isidore’s self-imposed exile in the face of Christian pressures (first to...